Jazz Articles
Daily articles including interviews, profiles, live reviews, film reviews and more... all carefully curated by the All About Jazz staff. You can find more articles by searching our website, see what's trending on our popular articles page or read articles ahead of their published dates on our future articles page. Read our daily album reviews.
Joshua Gerowitz: Solano Canyon
by Glenn Astarita
A non-exhaustive Internet search didn't reveal much in the way of biographical information on young guitarist Joshua Gerowitz, but on the opening track “Smooth as Ice," he would appear to be a potential jazz-fusion guitar hero. Atop a simple hook and a loose groove, armed with a significant bite, he weaves a stylization that nestles between experimental guitarist David Torn and Jimi Hendrix, as he shreds his guitar into miniscule bits, framed with malicious sounding EFX and sharp-edged phrasings. And ...
read moreMichael Vlatkovich: Mortality
by Glenn Astarita
Esteemed West Coast trombonist Michael Vlatkovich's second release with the large ensemble outfit Ensemblio, features a cast of largely, So. California artists including tuba performer Bill Roper and keyboardist Wayne Peet, who is also credited with the engineering duties on this pristinely recorded studio set. Nonetheless, Vlatkovich tosses more than just a few curveballs into the mix. The ensemble frequently subdivides into smaller factions during mini-motifs, but the program is an off-centered case study when considering how numerous ...
read moreMatty Harris: Double Septet
by Glenn Astarita
Multi-reedman Matty Harris' double septet is a large ensemble endeavor, featuring many Los Angeles artists, including venerable woodwind ace Vinny Golia for a program brimming with numerous horns-based convergences, soulful proclamations, subtle melodic inventions and pieces often designed with embryonic buildups and burgeoning choruses. Other movements enact notions of a calm-before-the-storm stylization amid interweaving passages and accents. Harris and associates primarily reside on the outside realm of jazz, but it is not chaotic by any stretch. The band toggles between ...
read moreJohn Blevins: Matterhorn
by Dave Wayne
Back in the 1960s, when the music now commonly known as fusion was called “jazz-rock," the earliest bands to get plastered with said label were essentially funk and rock rhythm sections--guitar, bass, keys and drums, plus or minus congas--with a lead singer and a jazzy horn section tacked on. Think Blood Sweat and Tears, or Tower of Power, or any number of the dozens of less-familiar bands in the sub-sub-genre such as Ten Wheel Drive (with Dave Liebman), Osmosis (with ...
read moreMichael Vlatkovich: Mortality
by Dave Wayne
Wow. Where to start? Apropos of its title, Mortality is huge. Vast. Complex. Quixotic. Musically, it's a mega-ambitious work that fuses operatic vocals, several styles of jazz, heavily-scored contemporary classical music and flat-out improvisational wailing in the most appealing ways possible. Interestingly, Michael Vlatkovich, a West Coast trombone virtuoso and composer / improvisor of considerable merit, is a guy who devotes considerable time to small group projects of various types--most notably tenor saxophonist Rich Halley's quartet--plus his own septet with ...
read moreVlatko: Subjective Experience In A Commercial Free Zone
by Glenn Astarita
West Coast purveyor of novel jazz concepts, trombonist and shrewd improviser, Michael Vlatkovich skirts the perimeters of expressionistic jazz rock and most all things jazz related, featuring electric guitarist Tom McNalley's impressive, quirky off-kilter voicings and stinging expeditions. It's a production that's framed on the outside schema, as the leader's compositions present a brooding and flourishing set of circumstances, built upon layers, abstractions, and the requisite improvisational encounters. The lengthy album title duly implies that Vlatkovich is blending ...
read moreOdeya Nini: Vougheauxyice (Voice)
by Eyal Hareuveni
The exceptional Odeya Nini explores assorted vocal aspects on her debut album, Vougheauxyice (Voice) --as an instrument that structures textural harmony, tonal animation or illuminates minute sounds; vocals that fit into collages of musique concrete; the kinetic characteristics of vocals in space relating to the body, and obviously, her own extended techniques. For Nini, the voice--in its great spectrum and her virtuoso delivery, beginning with innocent, primal articulations progressing through the most refined usages--is a means of inner searching and ...
read moreShowcase
Contest Giveaway
Premium
Featured Video
Radio
